The season finale of Star Trek: Enterprise will air this comming Wednesday. The next day I will call Cox Communications and cancel our cable service. That will mark the end of our broadband internet connection as well. I've gone from broadband to dail-up before. It's a tough switch to make, but I've always survived it. I don't know when I'll next have broadband or what form it will take.

In a broadband world dominated by cable and DSL, the vision recently put forth by top U.S. telecom regulator Michael Powell of a high-speed Internet connection in every electrical outlet may seem a bit far-fetched.

After all, broadband over power line, or BPL, services are currently available in only about a dozen communities nationwide, and even then only on a trial basis. The first commercial service -- to be deployed in Manassas, Virginia -- isn't expected to launch until summer. And so far, power companies have been reluctant to spend the vast sums required to retrofit aging networks for data.

But now that they've overcome some of the technological hurdles that plagued past experiments, power companies and networking providers are out to prove that BPL can be a viable business.